Model of the Day: Matchbox Dodge Monaco Police Car…

We can’t do Police Week at Lamley without showing a mini version of the cop car my generation grew up on. Maybe not in our toy boxes, as I don’t remember any toy Monacos at my house, but certainly we remember the plethora of them that crashed with Rosco B Coltrane at the helm:

And of course that is not all. The Monaco graced the screens of hundreds of movies and tv shows back in the day. Detectives, patrol cars, you name it. The car would skid across three lanes of traffic in a full-speed right turn during chases, crash into ditches, secure a portable magnetic police light on the roof, get coffee and hot dog mustard spilled on it when the call came in and it was time to zip, you name it. And all that on my tv, at least when my parents allowed me to watch.

And of course it actually served as a real police car in real life, but who cares about that. But if you need evidence, here is one donning the coolest Highway Patrol livery in the US, the Utah Highway Patrol:

Anyway, you cannot help but like the Dodge Monaco Police car in all its 70’s glory. It is still how I imagine a patrol car should look, 30 years removed from its heyday.

So I know I was not alone in my excitement when Matchbox announced it would do a Monaco Police Car in the 2009 lineup. They did, and it is a beauty. The only problem is it just hasn’t been used enough. The casting has been passed over for the Superfast line, Lesney Edition, and now the 60th Anniversary line. That is really too bad, because it became in instant classic the second it was released.

But, a little or a lot, I will collect all versions of the Monaco. And so far so good:

I have all of them. You’re missing the 2013 basic, the 2015 basic, and the 2016 9-pack exclusive. My favorite is still the 2011 mainline with the CHP livery, because that’s what I grew up running from 😂